Heart of Dreams
by apollinax
Summary: Once upon a dream, Sarah cut out the heart of a king. Now something wants it back. Jareth and Sarah, very AU.


A/N: I'm not quite sure what to make of this. It's way, way AU labyrinth, and a oneshot. Let me know what you think!

Heart of Dreams

Sarah's father was dying. She sat in the plastic hospital chair and held his clammy hand, listening to the beep of the machines.

"Do you want to save him?"

Sarah gasped and turned around. There was a monster standing in the doorway of the hospital room. The thing was tall and thin, and its skin rippled unpleasantly as if something were crawling beneath. A nurse came to check her father and walked right through it.

"Yes. I want to save him."

Sarah had dreamed every night since she could remember, strange and lovely and monstrous things. She dreamed of slowly suffocating in a glass coffin covered with roses. Wearing black armor that burned and running through an endless maze under starlight. Holding a newborn child and putting a cut finger to its lips, and letting it drink. In every dream, there was a man with silver eyes.

"Sleep with a knife in your hand," the monster told her. "This knife." It was an odd knife, metal and bone in curling designs. "When the man with silver eyes is distracted, when he is not expecting it, stab him with the knife. And then you must cut out his heart."

No, Sarah said, she could never do that, not even in a dream. But it was only a dream, the monster insisted. If she did not do it her father would die.

Sarah hoped for a nightmare, but the dream that night was soft. The silver-eyed man took her to a high tower. Sarah could see rivers and dark forests spread out under an orange sky, and every so often there was a flash of iridescent wings far below. The man stood behind her, telling her of the firebirds.

Sarah shifted so she was facing him and rested her head against his chest, over his heart. Though she did not will it, the knife was in her hand. He reached out to brush a strand of hair out of her face and Sarah instinctively leaned into the caress. But then she thought of her father, and willed herself to bring the knife down. He crumpled at her feet.

Sarah turned him over and pressed the tip of the knife to his chest. She wanted to be sick but she told herself she could not. The knife entered his chest. There was a flare and a crack, and a little black stone fell into her lap.

When Sarah woke up she was still sitting in the plastic chair, and her father was gone. He died peacefully in the night, the nurses said. She could see him now if she wanted. The monster came to the doorway again and asked for the heart, and Sarah spat in its face. It rushed at her. Sarah snatched a pen from the bedside table and, with the strength of fury and heartbreak, shoved it between the monster's eyes.

Three days after her seventeenth birthday, Sarah went to her father's funeral with the little black stone in her pocket. Through the grief and numbness she told herself that silver-eyed man wasn't real, that it didn't matter. But she did not dream of him again.

# # #

Sarah was curled up on her futon eating cheesy rice when the monster came again for the heart. There was a heavy thump at her apartment door, and the old horseshoe nailed to the doorframe hissed and flared bright. As the thuds against her door became rhythmic, Sarah cursed herself for leaving her weapons in the attic. She'd put her sword and iron bar and bag of rice away months ago, when her little brother came for a visit, and she hadn't bothered to get them back down. Something like this hadn't happened for years.

After the dreams stopped, Sarah had started to see things that other people couldn't. So she tricked a djinn out of three wishes and rode on great black birds with glass-shard wings, and trashed her first apartment in a fight that left a glittering gash in her side. Whatever this was, Sarah told herself, she could handle it.

With a final thump and a deafening screech, the front door of Sarah's apartment gave way. Wood splintered and flew and Sarah closed her eyes instinctively. When she opened them, the monster of ten years ago was standing in her doorway.

Sarah gaped at it. She had tried very hard not to think about that long-ago night in the hospital. When the years passed and nothing came for the heart, she assumed it was over. She had hoped, had in fact half-convinced herself that the whole thing was only a dream after all, the kind where everything was fixes in the morning.

"Shit!"

The thing was radiating the kind of power that had leveled armies; a pen wasn't going to save her this time. Sarah turned and ran. Through the living room, past the kitchen and up the stairs to her little loft bedroom. The monster's feet clicked on the hardwood as it came for her, and Sarah slammed the bedroom door and threw the deadbolt just in time. She unearthed the little black stone from her jewelry box and shoved it into her pocket. Then she rushed to her closet and shoved aside pumps and dresses and boxes of old photos, looking for the door.

Sarah built the door mostly on a whim. She had just moved into her apartment, and her friend Marcus mentioned that she might want to have an escape, just in case. Marcus had disappeared long ago, but miraculously her door was still there. Sarah ran careful hands over the white chalk square drawn against the back wall of her closet. Behind her she heard the bedroom door splinter apart.

There were good worlds, and bad worlds, and in-between worlds. The door wouldn't give her a choice where she ended up. But the thing behind her was certain death, Sarah knew. She put her palms inside the square and shoved.

# # #

Sarah landed in the middle of a party. She looked around in bemusement. There were no monsters, no raging war or endless darkness. She was sitting in a corner of what a ballroom, with marble floors and sparkling chandeliers and throngs of dancers. Some of the dancers looked human, but others were something else entirely. She saw women with what looked like black jewels embedded in their skin in swirling patterns, men with no face who seemed to fade in and out, and every variety of wings and claws and dauntingly sharp teeth.

Sarah stood up slowly, pushing her long hair out of her face. There were thousands upon thousands of worlds; she had absolutely no idea where she was. Sarah tried not to think about her apartment, the boxes of pictures and mementos and even her saggy futon. The monster would tear it all apart. Was it powerful enough to follow her through the door?

"Are you alright?"

Sarah started. A small woman stood at her shoulder in a lovely blue floor-length dress that shimmered in the light of the chandeliers. She was miraculously free of claws and teeth, and looked perfectly human.

"I'm fine, thanks."

The woman's brows drew together, but then she shrugged and gave Sarah a little curtsy. "My name is Lenora. This is my first solstice party; isn't it wonderful?"

Sarah nodded absently. She tried to give a clumsy curtsy before she remembered her jeans and tank top and bare feet.

"I'm Sarah. It's nice to meet you."

She turned away, intent on escaping through the crowd. Lenora put a hand on her arm. "Wait! Don't go, please. I came with my father and I...I do not know many people here." Lenora looked at the jeweled whirl of dancers in the middle of the cavern and slumped a little. Sarah felt twinge of pity despite herself.

Impulsively Sarah asked, "Lenora? Do you know anything about a...a man with silver eyes?"

Lenora started. Then she said slowly, "Not a man. The only creature with silver eyes is the Erlking." She placed a strange emphasis on the last word.

"The what?"

"The Erlking. _Erlkönig, _Alberich, the Elf King, the Alder King. He is named differently in different places, but he is known everywhere."

There was a poem about the Erlking, she remembered. Her college English professor had been obsessed with it. How did it go? Something about an elf king in a crown and cloak, a whisp of fog and a stolen child. Strange and lovely and monstrous things, like her dreams.

Lenora misread the look on her face and said, "You mustn't worry. The Erlking was very terrible, once, but he can't hurt anyone anymore."

"What happened?"

"Most shunned him. But he found a mortal girl, they say, and courted her with dreams. She must have known what he was. She caught him in a dream, and cut out his heart."

Sarah went very still. He courted her with dreams. It was ridiculous, impossible. Wasn't it? For the first time in ten years, Sarah tried to remember the dreams of her childhood. They came to her easily; as if they had been waiting.

She remembered the erlking smashing a coffin and taking her hand, and how the scent of crushed petals rose up sharply as he led her across a floor strewn with glass and roses. She remembered the erlking finding her in the maze and teaching her how to fight with a spear, move your feet, until his cry echoed hers when the minotaur was dead. And she remembered how he looked at her that last night in the tower, before the knife. She had been too young...

Finally Sarah managed, "Is he dead?"

"No." A short, plump man in a green evening coat laid a hand on Lenora's shoulder. The girl's father, Sarah realized. "No, he is not dead. They say he went back to his own world to die, but he is very powerful. It takes a long time." He stared at Sarah, and there was recognition and something close to hatred on his face. "The Erlking was terrible because he had to be. He was the balance. There can be no dreams without nightmares. There are terrible worlds, that the Erlking locked away even from memory. When he is gone...we do not live underground out of choice, my dear. Already, places have been lost. Some say ours will be next." Lenora's father took his daughter's hand. "Come. I do not think you wish to be her friend."

When they left, Sarah closed her eyes and cursed herself for the selfish, stupid child she had been. He was the balance.She did not love him, Sarah knew. She had tried very hard not to think of him at all. But for some reason the though of him dying alone in some backward little world was more than she could stand. Sarah reached a hand into her pocket, lightly touching the black stone. It was still unnaturally cold. Maybe, she thought, it wasn't too late to undo what she had done.

# # #

It took Sarah three months to find the world where the Erlking had gone to die. No one wished to speak of him and he clearly had no wish to be found. A sorcerer mercenary finally led her to a world of endless wastes. He took her to a tower in the middle of nothing, and left her there.

"The Erlking is here. Not sure if he's alive or dead, but he's here."

She found the Erlking in a room at the top of the tower. Jewels and bones and bits of trash were suspended on glittering threads from the ceiling, like a dream-catcher gone mad. He was lying in a kind of nest of blankets in front of a hearth that spanned the length of the tiny room. The fire was roaring, and the room was sweltering hot. His chest was bare and his eyes were closed. He was shivering violently.

Sarah stepped closer cautiously, until she was standing over him. She reached out a careful hand to pull the blankets higher. Then there was a low snarl behind her, and something knocked her hard to the floor. When Sarah scrambled to her knees and shoved her hair out of her face, the monster stood over her with the knife in its hand. It looked as if it had no intention of letting her escape a third time. It raised the knife...and then there was an oily black puddle on the floor, and it was gone.

Still half-stunned from her fall, Sarah turned around. The Erlking stood behind her. He was leaning heavily on the fireplace, and as she watched he swayed to one side and nearly fell. Loose pants hung low on his hips, and he was much thinner than he had been in the dreams, nearly gaunt. He started to sway again, and Sarah rushed forward and helped gently lower him back to the floor. The blankets had been shoved aside, and she picked them up and tucked the back around him. She couldn't bring herself to look at his face.

"Thank you. I'm...I'm not sure if you remember me, but thank you. You just saved my life."

Hot fingers snatched at her wrist as she was tucking the blankets. His voice was deeper than she remembered from the dreams, and it sounded like night and terror and solitude.

"Remember you. How could I forget you, cruel Sarah? The woman who cut out my heart."

Sarah shuddered. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to."

"Oh, yes, love. Yes you did. You would have killed me ten times over, if you thought it would save him."

She looked down. "I wouldn't now."

"No? Not to save your mother, your brother, your friends?" His voice turned harsh. "You lie, my Sarah."

Sarah thought about it, and shied away. She felt his fingers tighten on her wrist and blurted,

"Human women take some time, to grow up. There were things I...I didn't understand when I was seventeen. Things I think I understand now."

"Stop." His fingers left her wrists abruptly. "I believe we have both said enough. Take the heart and get away from this place."

"Take the heart?"

"It is of no use to me. It has been too long. I have no power to take it."

"What?" Sarah blinked at him. She reached into her pocket for the black stone and held it out to him. "But I don't want it. It's yours."

"You think that will fix things, do you? The pretty girl falls through the door and climbs to the top of the great tower, braving hardships unnumbered, to give the evil king back his heart." He gave a laugh that cracked at the end. "But didn't you know, my Sarah? I am a ruler of dreams. Fairy tales have no power here." He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. If it weren't for the slight rise and fall of his chest, she would think him dead.

Sarah stood in her jeans and tank top in front of the roaring fire and watched the Erlking. She remembered ten years without dreams, trying to forget a creature who she was only half-sure was real at all. She thought about leaving him to slowly freeze to death in front of a blazing fire, at the top of a tower in the middle of nothing. Like Snow White, Sarah thought a little hysterically, or maybe Rapunzel. She had never though of herself as particularly brave. She surely was not kind. So it was with something like horror that Sarah realized she couldn't, wouldn't leave him.

"What must I do?" The Erlking started and his eyes snapped open. Things had to be said in a certain way in places like this. "What must I do, to give the King back his heart?"

She felt power swirling, settling into the pattern of the words. She had offered. If he accepted there would be no turning back.

The Erlking stared at her. He spoke as if the words were torn out of him. "The girl must give up what she has taken."

Sarah held out the stone again but he shook his head. He tapped his chest, where his heart should have been.

"No. The girl must give of herself. She must give what was taken." She felt power flare and settle. Offer and acceptance bound her, Sarah thought with rising hysteria.

The Erlking stumbled to his feet and took one step toward her, then another. There were streaks of black in his pale hair, and markings on his face. He had just saved her. Surely he wouldn't...

Sarah tried to back away from him, but her feet literally would not move. The Erlking stopped just in front of her. His breath on her face was fetid and awful, and she gagged.

"No! I didn't mean it!"

He smiled with too many teeth. "Of course you didn't, love. You didn't mean to take my heart or my dreams. Or to destroy my kingdom and set the fury of nightmares loose on the worlds-" She gasped a little. "Oh, yes. Your friend Marcus' world was one of the first to be lost, I believe." Marcus, who had taught her how to make the door.

He reached out long, pale fingers and Sarah flinched violently away. Tears ran down her cheeks and into her mouth, and she could not think. The Erlking smiled gently.

"One heart to save worlds and you will not give it? Cruel Sarah." He stroked his fingers down her cheek, and she trembled.

"No! I can't. Please-"

The Erlking lowered his head and kissed her gently. His lips were freezing, like the stone still clenched in her hand. Then he reached his hands into her chest, and Sarah screamed.

# # #

When Sarah woke up there was a breeze on her face. She opened her eyes cautiously and saw orange sky and puffy white clouds. Her chest throbbed, but when she put fingers to her neck there was a steady beat.

Involuntarily she blurted, "I'm not dead."

"Pity."

The Erlking's voice was a hoarse whisper close to her left ear. With an effort Sarah turned her head. He was lying on the grass beside her, and if possible he looked worse than he had in the tower room. Sarah sat up a little and looked around, and with a start she realized that a wave of green was spreading outward in the distance, across the wasteland. Grass. She blinked, then abruptly remembered why she was here in the first place.

"You lied to me!"

"Exaggerated. I did need your heart, but only a very little of it. It did not harm you." He paused. "May I remind you, love, you have done far worse to me."

Sarah took a deep breath and dug her nails into her palms. A moment of terror was not much at all, she supposed, compared to ten years dying in a tower. But the knowledge that he would willingly hurt her was not pleasant.

She watched a cloud that looked vaguely like a dragon and said softly, "You wanted to scare me. To watch me suffer."

It took him a long time to answer. Finally he said, "Yes. I did."

She should be afraid, Sarah thought. But the most she could muster seemed to be a wary sort of respect, along with a wrenching sickness. She was not in love with him, she told herself again. But she could have been. Oh, very easily, she could have been.

Sarah watched the wave of green roll off into the distance and asked, "Can you fix it?" The worlds I destroyed. 

"No. I can bind the nightmares again and stop the taint from spreading. But the places lost are lost forever."

"Oh. Oh, no." She thought of Marcus, an escaped prisoner from a world where the bones of second sons were ground into powder and fed to the magic. He wore iron bracelets that they hadn't managed to pry off, liked Panang curry and when he slept over on her futon, he sometimes screamed in the night. He snuck back home to see his sister, and she never saw him again.

The worst of it, Sarah thought, was that she cared far less than she should for the fate of Lenora and the unnumbered worlds. She mourned Marcus, deeply. But she had not offered to save the Erlking because she wanted to be a heroine. Sarah wrapped her arms around herself. Without looking at the Erlking, she stumbled to her feet.

"Well. I guess I should be going. Good luck with...with everything." She gestured clumsily to the wave of green.

"Why did you offer?"

"What?" She turned around. He was still lying on the ground, staring at something in middle distance.

"You offered to help me. And you used old words, binding words. Why?"

She wanted to lie but the words pushed themselves out. "Because I wanted the dreams."

He lay very still, saying nothing. Finally she turned and walked away.

# # #

Sarah sat on the sand of the little beach with her knees pulled up to her chest, staring into the darkness and listening to the splash and lap of the water. Every once in awhile there was the rush of breeze in her face and the soft sound of rushing wings, and a long, mournful cry.

She had gone home long enough to quit her job and tell her brother she was taking a long vacation, and collect a miraculously undamaged shoebox of keepsakes from the blackened ruin that was her apartment. Then she went through the door in the closet once more, and found a world where she would be alone.

"Sarah."

Sarah scrambled to her feet at the sound of her name. The soft thing in her chest exploded and took flight, and Sarah told herself sternly not to be a fool. She watched as the dark outline of the erlking came toward her across the sand, his measured steps making no sound. He wore a long dark cloak, she saw, like in the poem. The starlight, brighter than she was accustomed to, caught and hovered on the sharp planes of his face. He stopped a full step away from her and Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. They stared at each other for a long time.

Finally he said, "You are staying here?"

"No. Just visiting. I think I'll travel, for awhile." She could see the tombs of Ibn-Nur, ride in the hunt at Clooth-na-barr and perhaps catch a glimpse of the horrible things that had once lived under the Irish hills. And eventually, maybe, she could forget again. Sarah crossed her arms over her chest.

"Why are you here?"

"If I had truly needed your heart, to reclaim my life and restore the worlds, I would have taken it. I could do no less." He paused. "I am perfectly capable of hurting you. I am capable of killing you. If I had seen the knife that night in the dream, I would have." She remembered fetid breath and hands in her chest, and shuddered.

"Do you take children?"

"Pardon?"

"In the poem, the erlking takes the child. And kills him."

His mouth twisted. "_Do you not see the Erlkonig, the Erlkonig with crown and cloak?_"

The quote was exact, as far as she could remember. Sarah went still.

"I took children long ago, when I first bound the worlds. Mortal dreams are...potent, and I was too weak to fight the nightmares without them. But I did not kill them."

"How...how many did you take?"

"I do not remember."

He expected to her to run, Sarah saw. She turned away and looked out over the water, into the darkness. He had stolen children. He had stalked her in dreams and tormented her, and surely done other unspeakable things. She was quiet for a long time. Finally she managed, "You were right. I would hurt you again if I had to. To protect my family, what's left of it. Or save a friend." She honestly wasn't sure if she could kill him.

The Erlking tilted his head, a curiously inhuman gesture. Then he raised a hand to her cheek very slowly, giving her time to step away. He did not kiss her. Instead, long cool fingers stroked carefully over her nose, her cheeks, her lips.

"My Sarah. You are something very rare, I think."

She shook her head. "I'm just human. Human, and strange, and cruel."

"Yes."

He took her hand, and she let him. When the sound of rushing wings in the night came again, Sarah and the erlking were gone.


End file.
